Net gets submarine backup

Internet cost to go competitive; outsourcing business to rise

Staff Correspondent

The cost of Internet service in the country is set to become competitive as NovoCom commercially launched data and voice connectivity with International Terrestrial Cable (ITC), which will serve as a backup to the submarine cable.

NovoCom, a private company, launched its operations taking a connection from an Indian terrestrial cable.

NovoCom officials, at a press briefing yesterday, said it has established a 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps or STM 64) connection with India and it would increase the capacity by eight folds before June, 2013.

NovoCom is the third company to obtain physical connection with Indian communication companies. Fibre@Home and 1 Asia Alliance Communication Ltd obtained their connections last month.

Investments worth millions of dollars, for business outsourcing, call centres and various IT services, were stuck due to absence of the second international connectivity, sources said.

"A backup of the lone submarine cable is very urgent for the country's call centres," said Syed Moinul Haq, managing director of NovoCom.

The MD said the ITC companies would also create bandwidth price competition in Bangladesh.

Chief technical officer of the company Tanveer Ehsanur Rahman said they got reasonable results while testing the connection and they were comparable to the submarine cable.

NovoCom officials said their facilities were able to provide voice, data and video services simultaneously.

The government in February issued six ITC licences.

The new ITC companies would be connected to the rest of the world through Benapole of Bangladesh and onto two landing stations in Mumbai and Chennai.

India has multiple international submarine cables and a number of submarine cable landing stations. It also has multiple international terrestrial cables with neighbouring and strategically important countries (China, Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan), according to a statement of NovoCom.

It also said the launching of IIG-players and 3G services are expected to exponentially increase internet connectivity of government branches, corporate houses, SMEs, academicians, institutions/schools, and individuals.

NovoCom is a sister concern of NovoTel Ltd, an international gateway operator.